Masc. • Coastal Contemporary Gallery • Newport, RI • coastalcontemporarygallery.com • Through March 30, 2020 *Editor’s Note: Coastal Contemporary Gallery is temporarily closed to the public due to COVID-19 social distancing recommendations, but the gallery can still accommodate small private showings. DM @coastalcontemporarygallery on Instagram or email info@coastalcontemporarygallery.com to arrange a viewing. By: Emily R. Bass How can one critique a system such as patriarchy that implicates us all, without taking the all-too-easy position as outsider, as if the issue is “them” and certainly n ..read more

By: Jacquelyn Gleisner Four parallel planes of cardboard extend from the wall at a 45-degree angle in Diane Simpson’s large wall-mounted sculpture, Corrugated Drawing #2 (1978). Simpson, whose works were included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial as well as several recent solo museum exhibitions, completed this sculpture soon after receiving her graduate degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This piece represents her transition from a two-dimensional practice rooted in drawing and printmaking into sculpture and installation-based art. This work also exemplifies Simpson’s early inv ..read more

By: Emily R. Bass Nobody is immune to struggle. Mental illnesses, grief and addiction can affect us all. Yet a stigma remains surrounding mental health, and discussions about emotions are often kept behind closed doors. Silvermine Arts Center’s winter exhibition heART and Mind (Through January 12, 2020) opens up these conversations, emphasizing the healing power of dealing with emotions within a community of people who care. Gallery view of heART and Mind. Left to right: Susan Clinard, Surviving Sexual Trauma Shedding Shelving Memory; Leticia Ortega Cortes, Prey #2, Prey #1 and Prey #3.  Suc ..read more

By Emily R. Bass   “Queer visuality…We may need to squint, to strain our vision and force it to see otherwise, beyond the limited vista of the here and the now.” – José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia.     In their exhibition Queer Paranormal (an exhibition concerning Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House), curatorial collective Two Chairs draw a parallel between the spirits that haunt Shirley Jackson’s famed novel and queerness—the unusual, the alternative, the strange. In their words, “Asserting that the paranormal is queer opens up a range of possibilities in relation to its rout ..read more

By Emily R. Bass What can we learn about life today from an epic about monsters and gods, ancient conquests and a 20-year journey by boat? This was the question posed in The Odyssey Project: An Old Story for Modern Times, on view at the University of New Hampshire Museum of Art through December 14. The Odyssey Project is the first-ever group exhibition curated by a long-running artist-run book club, who found inspiration in Emily Wilson’s contemporary translation of The Odyssey. The 25-year-old book club is made up of 15 New England-based female artists, as well as one longtime member who pas ..read more

By: Emily Bass In his exhibition Museum of Queer Ecologies at Distillery Gallery (on view through October 25), multidisciplinary artist Eli Brown connects conversations about nature and biology to discourses around queerness. Through a range of media—sound installation, video, sculpture and an illustrated zine—Brown builds a speculative, imagined futurist world (potentially not so far in the future) after sea levels have risen to unlivable levels. In this world, Brown examines our systems of classifying gender—that is, understanding sex and gender as concrete binary categories which are “biolo ..read more

By: Emily Bass All over the world, activists took to the streets today with the Global Climate Strike. These marches were held just three days before the UN Climate Action Summit. Boston’s Youth Climate Strike, which began at City Hall Plaza and made its way to the State House, saw thousands of young students, activists and artists passionate about environmental justice…and their signs. Activism is art, and art is activism—a mantra proven today by the hundreds of political picket signs that advocated for climate action with courage and creativity. Here are seven powerful signs from the Boston ..read more

By: Emily Bass   It’s a great time of year to visit Rockport. There’s a lot happening in the beautiful little community this weekend, from exhibition openings to must-see artist studios. While there are countless galleries to discover, Art New England did some of the legwork so you don’t have to. Here are five exhibitions we’re looking forward to visiting this weekend:   Karen Tusinski, from the Front Beach series, c. 2019, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Emily Bass. On view at Tusinski Gallery, Rockport. Works by James McLeod, glass. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Emily Bass ..read more

By: Charlotte Foote   Walking through the Bruce Museum’s Summer with the Averys, you’ll see a number of Milton Avery’s iconic works on display, typically bold in their rendering of color and abstracted figures. You’ll see seascapes and landscapes and swimming pools and riverbanks. And, as in many of his paintings, you’ll often see two women: his wife, Sally Michel, and his daughter, March, both of whom often served as his subjects. What’s different about this exhibition is that you won’t just find the Avery women within the bounds of Milton’s canvas, remembered only by his brush. Here at the B ..read more

By S. Scarlett Moberly Unknown artisan (Portsmouth, NH), Hearthrug, c. 1820-40, wool, silk, linen. Courtesy of Portsmouth Historical Society/Discover Portsmouth. “Folk art is a slippery term that can lead the unwary into a scholarly semantic quagmire from which there can seem to be no escape,” writes curator Gerald W.R. Ward in the introduction to the catalogue for the exhibition New Hampshire Folk Art: By the People, For the People, on at Discover Portsmouth, operated by the Portsmouth Historical Society, through September 29. “Primitive, naïve, popular, vernacular, ethnic, outsider, rural ..read more